The sensational Sheena Bora
murder case has rocked the moral bedrock of India’s rapidly rising middle
class. The story, as it unravels, has more than a powerful dose of elements
that is apt for a classic murder mystery. The fact that a mother can allegedly kill
her own daughter for possibly consolidating her powerful social life and beyond
is shocking in any culture – for Indian society it’s spiteful, frightening and
deeply unforgivable.
Now there is a faint personal
connection here: the victim happens to be
my wife’s classmate and the main suspect, the mother of the victim, Indrani
Mukerjea technically was my boss way back in 2007, when as a trainee reporter I
joined NewsX – the company she founded
with her former mighty media CEO husband, Peter Mukherjea.
It send shivers down the spine to
think such a morally unsound character and greatly undeserving person was made
to run a news channel, that when launched, was suppose to set a new benchmark
for television news reporting in India!
Well, that never really happened, the channel spluttered in a pretty
obnoxious manner literally shattering the dreams of hundreds of highly talented
young people. It also speaks volumes about the vulgar nature of some of the
Indian corporates and the notoriety of their operations.
There is another connection too,
Indira and her family is from Guwahati, when I was born and raised until age 9
before being packed off to a boarding school.
It will be wrong to pass a moral
judgement on a society or even question its eco system just because the people
involved are Assamese, but to a great extent, it will also be not unfair to say
that a section of Assamese middle class is hounded by a very distorted and narrow view of
modernism and liberalism that has resulted in a generation that is arrogant,
superfluous and intellectually hollow. The reason is simple: a large number of Assam’s
pseudo- rich don’t make money from enterprise but from corruption. Insurgency and other political reasons and
lack of ambition among youth has meant that people from the region despite
being socially progressive and educated, when compared with rest of India, struggle to find their footprint at national or international level. Try looking
at Assamese media: it’s shamefully rotten.
This is no to say that it doesn’t
happen in other societies (it does in a much violent form but in a much more conservative
set up).
Sheena’s life was very sad. Her
murder mystery has turned India’s privately owned noisy television channels into a full-blown
entertainment channels. We hear “expert “ commentary from the handful of
India’s mouthpieces, who like parrots, speak virtually on every subject, and seems
to have made television appearance their full time job. Their only
qualification: they can speak good enough to create noise.
Let’s hope that no child ever has
to go through what Sheena went through. She is a victim of moral ineptitude of
our complex and myopic society. In the mist of all these I wonder why national
media is not saying much about Peter Mukerjea. Is it because he is one of them?
A former Star TV CEO and what not.
Should he not be seen as a morally foul character. Read how he met her :(http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150827/jsp/frontpage/story_39367.jsp#.VeRt-Ot9vdk). Is he also not one of the classic failures of the India Inc. – not just because of his personal life but the way he handled
INX?
